AI’s existential crisis explodes but AI companies plunge ahead anyway
The resignation this week of Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon over concerns that artificial intelligence labs are “gambling with our lives” lit up the long-smoldering argument about whether AI is heading in a direction hazardous to human life.
Not only is he not alone at Anthropic — whose alignment science lead agreed with the possibility that AI has a more than 10% chance to “kill all humans” in the next decade — but OpenAI chimed in, as its chief scientist called for an AI research slowdown. And CEO Sam Altman reportedly told staff that the company is considering slowing down leading-edge AI work and wants other companies to do the same — if the government says that’s not an antitrust problem.
We’ll have to see if any of this existential worry actually changes anything, but I’ll believe it when I see it. Just this week, as almost every week, there was a flurry of new models, agents and apps galore — from Meta, OpenAI (twice), China’s DeepSeek and more. I understand why, and I’m still a bit skeptical of the AI doomers given the lack of specific reasons why AI can’t be controlled, but there’s definitely a disconnect here.
One thing that may slow things down regardless is the rising opposition to data centers. In a new feature story, Paul Gillin digs into exactly why AI requires so much compute — and why there isn’t a short-term fix. Tech giants have a lot of work ahead of them persuading communities not to shut down the next era of tech innovation.
By the way, don’t count out Europe in AI: Mistral AI this week raised almost $3.5 billion. And Paris-based startup Arlequin AI got $28 million to explore a fundamentally new kind of AI model.
Oracle looks like it’s finally benefiting from the AI boom, as its cloud infrastructure revenue more than doubled, and its stock rose 4% in late trading after falling more than that in regular trading, on an ugly day for the market. Adobe had a strong quarter too, but a light outlook sent shares down a bit after-hours Thursday.
As expected, autonomous software engineering firm Cognition AI raised another big round, a $32 billion Series E that values it at — wait for it — $48 billion.
Positron AI thinks it can solve the memory crunch in AI with an appliance that uses regular RAM instead of pricey and scarce high-bandwidth memory, raising an $875 million Series C round to prove it. Normally I might take such a claim with a grain of salt, but familiar old-school backers such as Silicon Graphics’ Jim Clark, Forest Baskett and Tom Jermoluk know what they’re doing, so this will be worth watching.
Oh, and Apple introduced some new iPhones, including a very expensive foldable. I find myself yawning, but I’m sure most of them will do fine.
Another flurry of events is coming next week: Salesforce’s Dreamforce in San Francisco, the AI Infra Summit in Santa Clara with lots of AI luminaries, Workiva Amplify in Las Vegas and the agent-focused developer conference AGNTCon + MCPCon in Amsterdam.
Here’s all the enterprise and emerging tech news this week from SiliconANGLE, theCUBE, theCUBE Research and beyond:
Analysis, opinion and food for thought
[The hard physics and complex economics of AI’s insatiable hunger for power](https://siliconangle.com/2026/09/11/the-hard-physics-and-complex-economics-of-ais-insatiable-hunger-for-power/)
[Breaking Analysis: Beyond shared responsibility: When AI acts, who owns the blast radius?](https://siliconangle.com/2026/09/09/beyond-shared-responsibility-when-ai-acts-who-owns-the-blast-radius/)
Gartner: By 2029, 30% of employees laid off from replacement by AI will need to be rehired — often at a significantly higher cost.
AI and data: AI still could kill us all — say AI companies
Policy
Anthropic researcher’s resignation sparks broad AI safety discussion More details from the researcher via Wired. And a good perspective from another Ant dropout, who says we’re missing the real problem of today’s AI: the loss of critical thinking.
So how might the “wiping out humanity” thing work, if it did? Two views, from the Wall Street Journal and Axios.
And another warning: Anthropic says AI now lets lone operators run state-level hacking campaigns
[OpenAI to set misalignment disclosure rules after agents took over a wiki](https://siliconangle.com/2026/09/06/openai-to-set-misalignment-disclosure-rules-after-agents-took-over-a-wiki/)
[OpenAI chief scientist argues for AI research slowdown](https://siliconangle.com/2026/09/07/openai-chief-scientist-argues-for-ai-research-slowdown/)
New models and services
[Meta debuts its ‘secure by design’ personal AI agent Muse](https://siliconangle.com/2026/09/08/meta-debuts-its-secure-by-design-personal-ai-agent-muse/)
[OpenAI’s ChatGPT Images gets faster, with sharper details and more refined edits](https://siliconangle.com/2026/09/08/openais-chatgpt-images-gets-faster-with-sharper-details-and-more-refined-edits/)
[OpenAI targets Wall Street bankers with a new version of ChatGPT](https://siliconangle.com/2026/09/10/openai-targets-wall-street-bankers-with-a-new-version-of-chatgpt/)
[DeepSeek releases V4.1-Flash, says it outperforms flagship V4-Pro](https://siliconangle.com/2026/09/10/deepseek-releases-v4-1-flash-says-it-outperforms-flagship-v4-pro/)
Amazon makes its agentic AI platform Quick generally available for desktop on Windows and macOS
[Databricks adds adaptive search model to speed agent retrieval](https://siliconangle.com/2026/09/09/databricks-adds-adaptive-search-model-to-speed-agent-retrieval/)
[Salesforce introduces Enterprise AI Harness, AI Control Plane](https://siliconangle.com/2026/09/10/salesforce-introduces-enterprise-ai-harness-ai-control-plane/)
[Lightbits set to release KV cache engine to boost GPU performance](https://siliconangle.com/2026/09/09/lightbits-set-to-release-kv-cache-engine-to-boost-gpu-performance/)
Cloudera brings Mistral AI’s frontier models into its secure hybrid data environments
CoreWeave launches new engineering service to help enterprises implement physical AI
Exclusive: Cfo.ai launches an agentic CFO for business founders Writer launches universal touchpoint for enterprise information and memory for AI
Atlassian upgrades AI coding agents for always-on software development Extreme Networks’ Agent ONE Coworker moves AI networking from dashboards to answers
Typewise orchestrates customer-service AI agents Certinia launches new System of Action as the foundation of autonomous service operations
Geordie launches Cost Intelligence to tie AI spending to agent activity Google Cloud, Accenture launch unit to put AI engineers onsite with customers (per the WSJ)
Money matters
[Open-source AI developer Mistral closes €3B funding round](https://siliconangle.com/2026/09/08/open-source-ai-developer-mistral-closes-e3b-funding-round/)
[AI coding startup Cognition raises $2B at $48B valuation as revenue nears $900M](https://siliconangle.com/2026/09/08/ai-coding-startup-cognition-raises-2b-at-48b-valuation-as-revenue-nears-900m/)
[Harvey raises $550M more to develop AI tools for legal teams](https://siliconangle.com/2026/09/09/harvey-raises-another-550m-to-develop-ai-tools-for-legal-teams/)
Forus [raises](https://www.finsmes.com/2026/09/forus-raises-150m-in-series-c-at-a-3b-valuation.html) $150M in Series C at $3B valuation to automate prescription workflows
AI-native CRM startup Lightfield raises $47M to build an AI agent-ready replacement for Salesforce
Arlequin AI raises €28M to build novel AI models that learn complex relationships at scale
Lightsage gets $4M in funding to help software makers sell directly to autonomous AI agents
Around the enterprise: Oracle gets an AI boost
Money matters
Earnings:
[Oracle’s stock moves higher on surging cloud infrastructure revenue growth](https://siliconangle.com/2026/09/10/oracles-stock-moves-higher-on-surging-cloud-infrastructure-revenue-growth/)
[Adobe shares slip as Q4 revenue guidance falls short despite a Q3 beat](https://siliconangle.com/2026/09/10/adobe-shares-slip-as-q4-revenue-guidance-falls-short-despite-a-q3-beat/)
[Chipmaker Positron nabs $875M to speed up inference with consumer-grade memory](https://siliconangle.com/2026/09/10/chipmaker-positron-nabs-875m-to-speed-up-inference-with-consumer-grade-memory/)
[Qualcomm inks AI chip, optical networking deal with Amazon](https://siliconangle.com/2026/09/08/qualcomm-inks-ai-chip-optical-networking-deal-with-amazon/)
Bending Spoons to [acquire](https://www.morningstar.com/news/dow-jones/202609104857/bending-spoons-to-buy-miro-for-136-billion) digital planning platform Miro for $1.36B.
Analog Devices to acquire Alif Semiconductor for $1.35B, adding AI-native processing platform to advance physical intelligence
Celero reels in $275M for its coherent digital signal processors Ayar Labs bags $150M in additional late-stage funding to help make bigger AI chip clusters
Anthropic investor leads $120M funding for off-grid AI power startup TAR
[Sales automation startup Clay boosts valuation to $7.1B in $115M funding round](https://siliconangle.com/2026/09/09/sales-automation-startup-clay-boosts-valuation-to-7-1b-in-115m-funding-round/)
[Bluecore Energy raises $50M to build its first floating nuclear system](https://siliconangle.com/2026/09/08/bluecore-energy-raises-50m-to-build-its-first-floating-nuclear-system/)
Piston Technologies raises $15M to expand its cardless payments tech for gas-guzzling truckers
New products and services
Exclusive: Compute Exchange adds GPU inventory manager to simplify AI infrastructure purchases
Kepler Computing thinks it just hacked the memory shortage ([per Wired](https://www.wired.com/story/a-new-dollar400-million-startup-wants-to-fix-the-ai-memory-bottleneck/))
[Orchid Security gives enterprises a kill switch for rogue AI agents](https://siliconangle.com/2026/09/09/orchid-security-gives-enterprises-a-kill-switch-for-rogue-ai-agents/)
[Pigment launches AI-generated interfaces to broaden business planning](https://siliconangle.com/2026/09/10/pigment-launches-ai-generated-interfaces-to-broaden-business-planning/)
Cyber beat: More bitcoin mischief
Attack & response
Hackers steal $320M in bitcoin from Liquid Network, return most of it after patch
[Google says attackers used AI agents to steal credentials in under six hours](https://siliconangle.com/2026/09/08/google-says-attackers-used-ai-agents-to-steal-credentials-in-under-six-hours/)
[Radware finds web DDoS attacks doubled as the patch window turns negative](https://siliconangle.com/2026/09/09/radware-finds-web-ddos-attacks-doubled-as-the-patch-window-turns-negative/)
[ClickFix moves into the browser and onto WebDAV, Cisco Talos finds](https://siliconangle.com/2026/09/08/clickfix-moves-into-the-browser-and-onto-webdav-cisco-talos-finds/)
New services
[Gravwell adds five AI agents that gather their own investigation context](https://siliconangle.com/2026/09/10/gravwell-adds-five-ai-agents-that-gather-their-own-investigation-context/)
[JumpCloud extends Agentic IAM with new controls for autonomous AI agents](https://siliconangle.com/2026/09/10/jumpcloud-extends-agentic-iam-with-new-controls-for-autonomous-ai-agents/)
[Rubrik extends data protection to Apache Iceberg tables on AWS](https://siliconangle.com/2026/09/08/rubrik-extends-data-protection-to-apache-iceberg-tables-on-aws/)
Money matters
Cylake closes $245M funding round ahead of beta release for next-gen cybersecurity product
[Cymphony launches with $30M to track what AI agents can reach](https://siliconangle.com/2026/09/09/cymphony-launches-with-30m-to-track-what-ai-agents-can-reach/)
[Five things investors may have missed from Netskope’s most recent quarter](https://siliconangle.com/2026/09/09/five-things-investors-may-have-missed-from-netskopes-most-recent-quarter/)
SailPoint Q2 earnings [surpass](https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/stocks/articles/sailpoint-inc-sail-q2-earnings-121502042.html) estimates
Elsewhere in tech: Apple fields a foldable
Apple announces foldable iPhone alongside the new 18 Pro, Watch and AirPods Google DeepMind’s AlphaGenome Atlas maps all 9 billion possible human DNA changes
Elon Musk’s The Boring Co. [raises](https://thenextweb.com/news/boring-company-3bn-raise-23bn-valuation-uae-term-sheet) $3B at a $23B valuation, led by the UAE
[Defense startup Mach Industries raises $600M amid manufacturing push](https://siliconangle.com/2026/09/10/defense-startup-mach-industries-raises-600m-amid-manufacturing-push/)
[Maven Robotics launches with $100M to scale its industrial robots](https://siliconangle.com/2026/09/10/maven-robotics-launches-with-100m-to-scale-its-industrial-robots/)
Nasdaq invests $100M in Kraken parent company Payward to advance tokenized equities
[Hyperspectral satellite startup Pixxel nabs $100M investment](https://siliconangle.com/2026/09/07/hyperspectral-satellite-startup-pixxel-nabs-100m-investment/)
[Former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick is returning to the robotaxi race](https://siliconangle.com/2026/09/06/former-uber-ceo-travis-kalanick-is-returning-to-the-robotaxi-race/)
[General Robotics’ GRID platform engineers itself, cutting robot setup to hours](https://siliconangle.com/2026/09/09/general-robotics-grid-platform-engineers-itself-cutting-robot-setup-to-hours/)
[IonQ launches Superion 256, a quantum computer built for volume production](https://siliconangle.com/2026/09/08/ionq-launches-superion-256-a-quantum-computer-built-for-volume-production/)
[Antioch raises $32M to move robot testing into simulation](https://siliconangle.com/2026/09/08/antioch-raises-32m-to-move-robot-testing-into-simulation/)
Exclusive: Team8 finds institutional money for small venture funds at a post-dot-com low
Comings and goings
Star AI researcher **Andrew Tulloch** is leaving **Meta**, no word yet where he’s going ([per the WSJ](https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/star-ai-researcher-is-leaving-meta-8906e4aa)).
**WordPress** co-founder **Matt Mullenweg** was [ousted](https://www.searchenginejournal.com/wordpress-co-founder-matt-mullenweg-ousted-from-automattic/589009/) from Automattic.
Cybersecurity expert **Kevin Mandia** is [joining](https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/company-news/kevin-mandia-amazon-board-of-directors) **Amazon**‘s board.
What’s next
Events
Sept. 15-17: Dreamforce, Salesforce’s annual confab in San Francisco: SiliconANGLE will be onsite with all the news.
Sept. 15-17: **[AI Infra Summit](https://www.ai-infra-summit.com/)**, Santa Clara: SiliconANGLE will be onsite with the highlights.
Sept. 15-16: [**Workiva Amplify**](https://www.thecube.net/events/workiva/workiva-amplify-2026) *, Las Vegas: TheCUBE and theCUBE Research will be onsite with interviews and analysis. (** Sponsored*)
Sept. 17-18: **[AGNTCon + MCPCon](https://events.linuxfoundation.org/agntcon-mcpcon-europe/)**, Amsterdam.
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